An increased smartphone penetration, advances in delivery infrastructure and heavy discounts on e-commerce buying are the key reasons behind India being the fastest growing e-commerce market, a new report has revealed.
Consumer electronics segment was learnt to be having the highest online penetration, even as currently e-commerce sales of consumer electronics stood at 17 percent of the total retail sales in the country. It was followed by apparel and footwear (9 percent), and beauty and personal care (1 percent).
With e-sales worth of 530 billion U.S. dollars, the food and grocery segment had one of the lowest online penetration of just 0.1 percent.
It also found that Alibaba and Tencent, both Chinese e-commerce giants, were the best known Asian retail ecosystems. But, India too was witnessing the emergence of retail ecosystems led by Reliance, Flipkart, Walmart, Amazon, and Alibaba, an English daily The Times of India reported on Thursday.
According to the report prepared by consultancy firm Bain & Company, India's total e-commerce retail sales in 2017 stood at around 20 billion U.S. dollars. It indicated that there was immense scope of expanding this retail trade in the coming years, even as another 50 billion U.S. dollars worth of online e-commerce could be added by attracting new internet users that are not currently into shopping online due to various reasons.
It is estimated that online retail penetration in India is as low as 5 percent compared with markets such as China, which has 20 percent online retail penetration, and the United Stated with 12 percent online retail penetration. Recently, India stood at eighth among 11 countries in terms of online retail penetration.
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